It was hard to tell how old the building was, but it was actually really handsome, with lots of wood and huge windows everywhere that let in lots of light. Everywhere in sight were leaves, branches, and sunshine, as though we were in a treehouse. The only furniture in the lobby was a pair of rattan chairs, a three-seater sofa opposite them, and a low wooden coffee table. It wasn’t exactly warm and welcoming, but neither was it austere and unfriendly. No one was around, and I felt a sense that no one would be.
Luther stood by me quietly. Every pore of my body was conscious of his physical presence a couple of feet away. I felt such nervous anticipation that I was transported back to Duke, the night of our first date more than a dozen years before. I hadn’t known that an anxious girl still lived inside the grown-up woman.
Finally one of the elevator doors opened. Mercifully, there was no one inside it whose presence we might have to acknowledge. I felt painfully aware of the two of us together, how we would be perceived as a couple. Once inside, Luther pressed the button for the third floor. During the short trip up, we each managed to move to an opposite corner of the elevator, putting as much space as possible between us. We said nothing, and avoided eye contact.
Luther opened his door and stepped aside to let me go in first. I gasped when I walked inside. Nothing had prepared me for what I saw.
It felt as if I was standing in the top of a tall tree. The apartment was in the corner of the building, and the outer walls were all glass and unadorned by curtains. I stared out into heavy green, broken only by golden sun. The windows were all open as far as they could go, which was incredibly rare in Miami. I realized that the apartment faced east, and was cooled by sea breezes coming directly from the bay. I could hear the leaves rustling gently just outside. The air in the apartment was kept circulating by palm-tree ceiling fans that twirled gracefully above.
Whoever the designers of the place had been, they were brilliant. Wall-to-wall sisal carpet covered the floor. Yards and yards of white muslin cloth was generously arranged throughout, draping doorways, covering rattan couches, tables, and chairs, and suspended from light fixtures. Even the tall palm trees in the corners were partially camouflaged with white fabric. It was all remarkable. Luther must have known the first-time impact the place would have on me, because he stayed a few feet behind and let me take it all in. My eyes moved back and forth, finding new details; but I had to admit that all the white gauze made me feel as though I were in the center of a very large merengue. If I didn’t dissect things too much, then there was a definite otherworldliness about the place.
“Wow,” I said, my voice unintentionally hushed.
“I know,” Luther said with a quiet laugh. “Even after years of renting this place, I still haven’t gotten used to it. Sometimes I wake up during the night, smell the breeze, and see all this white, and for a second I think I might have died and landed in heaven.”
Luther took my hand and led me to one of the sofas. He pushed some muslin aside, and invited me to sit down.
“Something to drink?” he asked.
“Yes. Thanks.” I accepted his offer more to buy time than because of thirst. I took off my jacket and put my purse on the floor, stopping to reach inside and turn off my cell phone. I watched Luther walk away to the kitchen and tried taking a few deep breaths to relax myself.
Soon I heard the sound of cupboards being opened and closed. A few moments later Luther returned with a silver tray; on it was an ice bucket with a bottle sticking out of it, along with two flute glasses. He set the tray down carefully on the table in front of the sofa where I was sitting.
“Veuve Clicquot still your favorite?” he asked in perfect Spanish as he sat on the other side of the sofa and got to work. “I took a chance that it still would be.”
“Sí. Gracias,” I said, touched by his memory. He carefully twisted the cork off the top of the bottle, poured two glasses, and handed one to me.
We touched the tops of our glasses lightly and took a few sips, avoiding looking directly at each other. Noticing that I had discarded my jacket, Luther seemed to realize that he was still wearing his. He stood up and took it off, draping it over the nearest chair.
“Luther, I’m really nervous about this,” I blurted out, putting my glass on the table. I felt like I couldn’t keep it together much longer.
“Me too, Daisy, me too,” Luther confessed. Then his face took on a mischievous look. “And, querida, in my case that could be problematic.”
It took me about ten seconds to replay what Luther had said, then to figure it out. I started laughing, more from nervousness than anything else, but it was the right thing to do. Luther and I moved together and began kissing, softly first, in an exploratory manner, but then with increased urgency. Luther tasted like Binaca and champagne, a Proustian moment that made me feel as though the years since law school had never happened.
We moved to the bedroom, which was furnished in the same style as the rest of the apartment. Breezes made the white fabric sway and undulate everywhere, billowing and tangling. The bed was huge, an extra-size four-poster, canopied with tons of fabric. Apart from a rattan dresser in the middle of one wall and matching dressers on either side of the bed, the only other item of furniture in the room was a big-screen TV in the corner, situated to face the bed.
Luther had started to unzip my dress when he looked hard into my eyes. “I’m going to put your mind at rest, because I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed,” he said softly. “I’ve been tested, and I’m clean. I have no diseases, I’m not going to give you anything. I promise you that. But if it’ll make you feel better. I’ll still use protection.”
“Thanks,” I said, filled with relief over the information and not having to ask about it. “And no, I trust you.”
Luther finished unzipping my dress, holding my hand so I wouldn’t lose my balance as I stepped out of it. I cringed at the sight of my white underwear—one step up from Sparky pants and a training bra, but Luther seemed not to notice. He carefully put my dress on a dresser, then returned and reverently laid me down in bed. He made me feel so special that I almost forgot to suck in my stomach.
There was lots of natural light coming in through the wide windows, but it was indirect and diffused by gauzy fabric, so I began to relax about my body. As though sensing my modesty, Luther turned down the white sheets and slipped me between them. The fabric was so soft, I thought, that the thread count must have been in four figures. Softly, gently, but with the assurance of a practiced hand, Luther turned me over slightly and unhooked my brassiere and slipped off my panties. He covered me up with the top sheet and started to take off his own clothes. This took less time because he let his shirt and pants slip unceremoniously to the floor.
Suddenly we were back at Duke. The awkwardness between us was forgotten, and we made love with no reservation, the way we always had, holding nothing back. But, as much as it was the same, it was also different. I felt a sweetness and affection between us, almost a protectiveness, that had never been there before. It infused our mutual lust and passion with a sense of trust and comfort.
In the beginning, I sensed we were both trying not to show our extensive experience and expertise in lovemaking. It was as though we were trying to appear innocent in each other’s eyes, as if we hadn’t learned anything from anyone else in the years we’d been apart. But soon we became more open and adventuresome, and our reluctance to show it dropped away. Then the obvious fact that we’d had other lovers in the intervening years added to the sexual energy between us, and made us more sensual than I could ever recall.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, we separated, so hot and sweaty that our bodies made a smacking sound as we broke away. I lay on my back, exhausted, feeling the sweat rolling off my body. It was a sensation I would normally have found unpleasant, but it felt like a just consequence of the past few hours. The breeze from the ceiling fan started to cool me, and I began to dry myself off with the bed sheets. Unfortun
ately, Luther and I had pretty much soaked through them, and it was hard work trying to find anything dry on the bed.
I faced the window and looked outside, seeing that the sun was no longer shining brightly. I spoke for the first time since we entered the room.
“Luther, I have to go now.” I saw his disappointed expression. “It’s getting late. I’m sorry.”
“You know I don’t want you to go, but I understand,” Luther replied. “I’m not going to make things difficult for you.”
Luther propped himself up on one elbow and gently kissed me. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and went to the dresser, where he found my clothes.
“Do you want to take a shower
before you go?” he asked.
“No, I think I’ll wait until I get home.” Despite what we had just done, taking a shower in his place felt like a line that I didn’t want to cross. It was more than a little crazy of me. “Thank you, though.”
Despite having spent hours exploring each other’s body, Luther hadn’t yet seen me standing up naked. Although what we had just done could have probably gotten us arrested in some southern states, I wasn’t about to walk across the room without my clothes on. Luther might have known every inch of my body lying down, but not standing up. Every woman thirty-five or older who’s had children knows about the difference between the two. For now, I was going to make sure Luther saw only the best view of me. I would rather go home smelly, sweaty, and sticky than have Luther watch me parade across his bedroom naked.
I took the clothes from him and, quickly as possible, got dressed. Luther lay in bed, naked and uncovered by sheets. When I was finished, he got up and hugged me tight.
“I love you, Daisy,” he said into my ear. “With every breath and every second of the day.”
“I know,” I told him. “I love you, too.”
And I did. God help me. Ay.
[23]
As I sprinted out of Luther’s apartment toward the elevator, I realized that we had exchanged barely more than a dozen words during the course of the afternoon; for some reason, it hadn’t seemed necessary. I waited for the elevator to come, and waited, pressing on the call button again and again as though that was going to make it come faster.
To avoid cracking the plastic button, and to keep myself from going crazy until the elevator came, I took my cell phone out of my purse and checked my voice mail. I was alarmed to see that I’d had four calls, but I relaxed when I played them back. There was one each from Vivian and Anabel, both asking me to call ASAP. I knew what they wanted—they were bursting to talk about the adoption. There was one from Maria at the office, telling me I had to return at once because a new batch of documents had come in that afternoon which required my immediate attention. I knew nothing was that urgent, and that Maria just wanted to send out some more bills. I hoped the call didn’t mean that my secretary was insecure about our position in the firm. I knew I was going to have to perform some serious handholding. The final message was from my mother, asking me to call her back, saying she urgently needed to talk. I didn’t worry about Mamá using the word “urgent,” because if it had really been an emergency I would have had ten calls from her, not to mention from all the relatives she had panicked when she wasn’t able to get hold of me right away.
In other words, there was nothing I needed to deal with immediately. In my circle of family, friends, and colleagues, everything was an emergency and all matters required immediate attention. I was so used to such messages that I was able to filter out the true emergencies from routine calls. No one ever said to call back when I had a chance anymore.
I had to laugh as I deleted Mamá’s message. As usual, she had prefaced it by saying that she wasn’t sure if I would get it because she “didn’t know how to use the machine.” I’ve had a cell phone for years, and I’ve gotten every single message that anyone has ever left me. True, Mamá had reason to doubt the reliability of our messaging system—but that was because sometimes I didn’t consider it an emergency to call back to gossip about how my tia Norma’s dermatologist had botched her latest round of Botox injections.
The elevator arrived just as I switched off the messages, and I hopped on board and pressed the button for the ground floor. I don’t know what explanation or excuse for my presence I would have offered had I run into someone I knew just then. Now that I was leading a double life. I realized I was going to have to be prepared for such eventualities. It didn’t matter how big it seemed to an outsider; for me, Miami could be claustrophobically small.
I walked to the visitor’s parking area as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself, got in, started up the car, and drove away. As I headed for the Beach, I concluded that I couldn’t go home in this physical and emotional state. I needed to regroup.
A few blocks after exiting the MacArthur Causeway, I stopped off at my regular gas station at Alton Road and Fifteenth Street. I pulled over to the full-service pump and asked the attendant, who recognized me and raced over to help, to fill up the car. The Escalade’s tank is so huge it takes forever to fill, so I knew I would have ample time to use the rest room and pull myself together.
I’d used that service station at least a hundred times, but I’d never been inside the ladies’ room. From my initial inspection of the place, I hadn’t missed much. My bladder felt like it was exploding, though, and I didn’t have the luxury of shopping around for better facilities. The bathroom was awkwardly laid out but blessedly ill-lit, so I didn’t have to confront myself too closely in the mirror when I was done peeing. I didn’t know what I was searching for in the mirror, maybe some kind of instant transformation from wife and mother to adulteress. The days of Hester Prynne were long gone, I reminded myself, and there was no scarlet letter to be sewn on.
The face that stared back at me was the same face I’d worn that morning. Only my eyes darting for clues gave away any sign that something had changed within me. I hoped I would be able to hide my inner agitation, and not show it at home. Standing there in front of the chipped and broken mirror, in a bathroom overrun with cardboard cutout pine trees that were old and smelly, I asked myself what had really changed about me.
In high school, people said that everyone was able to tell when a girl was no longer a virgin. I wondered, superstitiously, if that kind of thing applied to adulteresses. I looked straight into my eyes and told myself to stop thinking idiotic, paranoid thoughts. I was going to drive myself crazy. I was Catholic, but I wasn’t about to flog myself for what I’d done, or shave my head, or wear sackcloth and ashes. I had to snap out of this and get on with my life—and, in the process, figure out what my life was. This smelly bathroom wasn’t the place to do it.
Now I had to fix myself up as best I could. I splashed some water on my face, then wet one of the brown paper towels that were stacked on top of the toilet. I ran it over my neck, arms, and legs, cringing as the rough paper scraped against my skin. I threw that one away and wet another. I unzipped my dress and wiped my breasts, my belly, between my legs. I cupped some water from the faucet in my hand and rinsed out my mouth, spitting into the sink. Just before I left, I opened my purse and took out the bottle of Chanel No. 5, which I sprayed all over myself and my clothes. It served to mask the putrid pine-cleanser smell that permeated the place, so the next woman to use the bathroom would be spared the Christmas-in-July effect that was slightly nauseating me. There was nothing else I could do with the materials at hand, so I went back outside to retrieve my car.
My timing was perfect; the attendant was screwing on the gas cap. I waited as he cleaned the back window, then I signed the credit card receipt, tipped my usual five dollars, and was on my way.
It was close to six, but the sun was still bright and blinding, forcing me to squint as I drove north on Alton Road. I had to be careful because at that time of day the street was full of pedestrians, bikers, Rollerbladers, skateboarders, dog walkers, and kids on scooters. No one ever paid attention to traffic signs or
signals on South Beach, and the last thing I needed was to hit someone. The worst, most dangerous corner was at the intersection of Alton and Lincoln Roads. The new multiplex movie theater built there had sparked a renaissance in the western leg of Lincoln Road, the eight-block South Beach walking mall, and hordes of people flocked the place, particularly on the weekends. For some reason, visitors to South Beach invariably leave their law-abiding ways on the causeway, and jump right into the lawless fray.
That day, I made it through the danger zone without incident. Soon I turned from Alton onto North Bay Road. To my profound relief, I saw that Ariel’s car wasn’t parked in his slot in the garage. I needed some time before I could be around him—or anyone, for that matter.
I quickly parked the Escalade next to Ariel’s empty space, then hurried into the house. Instead of calling out that I was home, which I always did, I rushed straight up to the bedroom, stripped off my clothes, and ran a hot bath with a capful of gardenia oil. While I waited for the bath to fill up, I threw my underwear into the dirty clothes hamper, and my dress and jacket into the shopping bag reserved for clothes bound for the dry cleaner. There was one more preparation I needed to make. Wrapped in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, I went to the den and found a split of champagne chilling in the refrigerator, along with a flute glass.
Walking back to the bathroom, I heard peals of laughter coming from Marti’s room; from the sound of it, they were playing hide-and-seek, his favorite. I was tempted to stick my head in and announce my presence, but I decided that I needed to cleanse myself before touching my son. I resolved not to take a long time doing it, because I felt a strong need to be with him. In the bathroom, I opened the champagne and poured myself a glass. I had a flashback to Luther’s apartment, and the Veuve Clicquot he had poured for us but which we had pretty much left untouched. I drank one glass and quickly poured another. This glass I placed carefully on the side of the bathtub.
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